Chris Abani Quotes

There is no living African writer who has not had to, or will not have to, contend with Achebe's work. We are either resisting him - stylistically, politically, or culturally - or we are writing toward him.

Chris Abani

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Quotes to Explore

• Kids love to look at pictures of themselves.

  

  Nancy O'Dell
  • Love
  • Kids
  • Look

• The nations of Africa, as is true of every continent of the world, from time to time dispute among themselves. These quarrels must be confined to this continent and quarantined from the contamination of non-African interference.

  

  Haile Selassie
  • Time
  • World
  • True

• If you're in a film that you're proud of and you care about, then you're always happy to talk about it.

  

  Felicity Jones
  • Happy
  • Proud
  • Care

• I've always been proud that my name stands for peace.

  

  Paloma Picasso
  • Peace
  • Proud
  • Name

• If you interact with anyone, ultimately, all people are the same. However they're dressed, when you're in the house with a person, they're going to be a regular human being.

  

  Eddie Murphy
  • People
  • House
  • You

• I love surfing more than cricket, more interesting and you meet great people.

  

  Hansie Cronje
  • People
  • Great
  • Love

• The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

  

  Salvador Dali
  • Man
  • Woman
  • Rose

• Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Fashion
  • Have
  • Ugliness

• My hat's off to Shonda Rhimes.

  

  Octavia Spencer
  • Hat
  • Off

• It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.

  

  J. D. Salinger
  • Know
  • Stupid
  • Doing

• When the art world is done wrong, a reader's faith is lost and possibly not recuperable.

  

  Rachel Kushner
  • World
  • Done
  • Art

• Each song is a small universe to me. Each song has a story of its own. Each has a full life to express in order to be complete, so it often happens that the building to a big crescendo feels right in the recording or writing process.

  

  Damien Rice
  • Life
  • Writing
  • Song

• America is huge.

  

  Ace Frehley Kiss
  • America
  • Huge

• Honestly, I'm not interested in gossip. Thing is, I know a lot of successful actors, and in hoping to be successful myself, I would like to think others would respect my privacy.

  

  Nathan Parsons
  • Respect
  • Myself
  • Gossip

• I just came back from my hometown, making a movie about a kid who grew up just like me, and it was financed by white people in New York. Personally, I can't be angry. In my personal experience, the support was there.

  

  Barry Jenkins
  • People
  • Up
  • Experience

• Racism is everywhere - the older generations in Malaysia still say things like, 'She's darker-skinned; maybe don't marry her,' and it's very judgmental. A lot of girls do try to get fairness cream to lighten their skin, and I'm against all of that.

  

  Yuna
  • Racism
  • Generations
  • Fairness

• I just want to show the fans my big smile and play the game that I love.

  

  Yani Tseng
  • Game
  • Play
  • Smile

• Life is precious, and when someone dies it's an opportunity to realise how precious it is. My brother drowned when I was 17. He was 15. I think I grew from that. My father didn't. It really crushed him.

  

  Val Kilmer
  • Life
  • Father
  • Opportunity

• All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.

  

  Doris Lessing
  • Time

• If you go to Africa and you're white, you're probably not going to get that much work either. But the fact is that there is a longer history of black integration in the U.S. I don't have any resentment about this: I did the maths, calculated it against my ambition and decided to leave England.

  

  Idris Elba
  • Work
  • History
  • Black

• I'd love to work with Kanye West. He's gone through a lot of stuff in the public eye, but his music is genius. He always takes risks.

  

  Bebe Rexha
  • Work
  • Music
  • Genius

• I feel as though there are things that I'm trying to do - you know, capturing truthfully some aspect of human experience - and I'm trying really hard not to be fake. And in writing, as in life, it's harder than you think.

  

  Claire Messud
  • Life
  • Writing
  • Trying

• There is no living African writer who has not had to, or will not have to, contend with Achebe's work. We are either resisting him - stylistically, politically, or culturally - or we are writing toward him.

  

  Chris Abani
  • Work
  • Writing